Pentagon 9/11 (review)

Alfred Goldberg first saw the Pentagon in 1943, just months after its completion during World War II. Over the course of more than five decades as a military historian, including 34 years as chief historian for the Department of Defense before retiring in 2007, Goldberg earned a reputation as an exacting and objective scholar.

Pentagon 9/11serves as a fitting capstone to this career: a thorough, unbiased, warts-and-all portrayal of what went wrong and what went right on the most fateful day in the Pentagon's history, September 11, 2001.

The book is a collaborative effort written by five Defense Department historians, with Sarandis Papadopoulos of the U.S. Naval Historical Center taking the initial lead, joined later by Diane Putney, Nancy Berlage, and Rebecca Hancock Welch from the Historical Office for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, all under the hands-on leadership of Goldberg, who was determined to see the project through before retiring.

Books written by a team of authors—particularly those related to the Department of Defense—run the risk of reading as if assembled by a committee, with all flavor and personality beaten out, and any hints of controversy tamed. Nonetheless, Pentagon 9-11is a very readable and often compelling narrative, capturing the day's chaos, tragedy and heroism, all of which were present in abundance.

Faced with the daunting challenge of synthesizing more than 1,300 oral history interviews conducted by the historical offices of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Defense Department, the authors have done an excellent job of boiling down the material to the most telling details.

The attack on the Pentagon, which cost 184 lives, was deadlier than any act of terrorism on U.S. soil before that day. Yet it was immediately overshadowed by the simultaneous attack on New York City's World Trade Center, which collapsed with far greater loss of life. One result is many Americans have little comprehension of the great drama that ensued when terrorists flew the hijacked American Airlines flight 77 into the Pentagon, and how narrowly many escaped death.

Pentagon 9/11relates the unsung, almost routine heroics of a host of Pentagon workers who, rather than rush to save themselves, ran to the sound of the guns and saved the lives of co-workers. Among the most dramatic accounts is that of Lt. Cmdr. David Tarantino, a Navy flight surgeon, and Navy Capt. David Thomas, who crawled into a mountain of wreckage to reach and free a trapped worker in the Navy Command Center, which was decimated in the attack.

The enormous complexity of fighting the fire in the world's largest office building is explained, with useful detail from the firefighters and other first responders of the great challenges faced in fighting a fire much larger and more dangerous than is generally understood.

The authors chronicle the failures of the Pentagon's antiquated alarm systems, the confusion of the building's evacuation, the communication problems that hindered care of the injured, and the lapses in coordination between the many responding agencies.

The book also depicts the true horror of the search for bodies, and the relentless professionalism and respect displayed by the men and women of the Army's "Old Guard," given the job of removing remains from the building.

Numerous details, many of them previously unreported, pepper the account, among them the story of how a guard denied Vice President Dick Cheney access to the most devastated portions of the Pentagon because he lacked the proper badge.

The authors had access to military photographs not previously available to the public, and the book has two 16-page inserts of color photographs, many of them powerful and sobering. More than a dozen useful maps, graphics, and illustrations are included, depicting the building and the attack.

With its eye-witness accounts, clinical detail, and photographs, the book is an effective rebuke to the vocal minority which...